HR Like a Boss Michelle Leedy on Passion in the Workplace

I could be satisfied at work because I sit and you know I watch cat videos on YouTube all day. Thank you for checking out today's video. I'm certainly excited to be talking with Michelle Leidy. As many of you may know I have embarked on a journey to write a book called HR Like a Boss and as a part of that I'm interviewing amazingly awesome HR professionals and business people who are making an impact at their companies, their organizations, and in their community. And Michelle Leidy certainly falls into that category. I was introduced to Michelle by one of my colleagues within the Disrupt HR Columbus community and he spoke so highly of Michelle. I was super excited to meet her and she more than exceeded the expectations that Chris Rutter had shared. So super delighted to have Michelle on the show today and we're going to dive into some interesting topics. So how are you doing Michelle? Doing fantastic thanks. I'm just thrilled to be here today. Thank you for the invitation. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule. So in this journey of HR and HR Like a Boss I think for all companies, all organizations we start with a mission and purpose and I'm just curious in getting your perspective of what do you define as the purpose of human resources? Yeah that's a great question. For me I think human resources is really here to drive and consult and to lead human capital related structure within an organization. For me there's human capital, financial capital, and social capital and the niche for human resources is to stay in that 80 percent with human capital build the network and the connections to financial and social capital so it comes alive to serve the purpose of the business whatever it is. I love how you said that. That was really cool and I think it's neat how you tie all those together and driving that. Now an interesting kind of backstory for those that are watching and listening is Michelle and I had a recently sat in on a chat series as part of a Disrupt HR event and the concept of love at work came up and many of you might be screeching in HR like oh gosh what are you about to talk about and it's ironic because it kind of created this creative mindset for me around love in the workplace, appropriate love in the workplace and it reminded me of a discussion I had with a longtime HR executive who's been wildly successful and really gets HR from my perspective and so I wanted to dig in a little bit deeper into this how Michelle Leidy sees love in the workplace and it's result to drive those aspirational what I might call deliverables that HR is supposed to bring to that social capital, to the financial capital, and to the human capital. So when you hear the word love at work what does that mean to you Michelle? Yeah so you know when I think about love in the workplace you know to me it's about bringing passion into the workplace. I think in our language we, at least in the English language, we're limited with how many ways we have to articulate love in a way that's meaningful. We use it a lot, it's part of us, yet when we enter into the workplace sometimes that word just leaves the vernacular completely and we associate it with different kinds of passionate love, with romantic love, maybe with family love. How many times do we have a conversation about a hobby or something we do at work and we're like I love that, I love working on this kind of project. You know when you ask somebody what fills their cup, I love you know doing work that serves other in xyz reasons. That's love, that's the passion. There's a quote I really like, it's by John Wesley and he says, catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come from miles to watch you burn. And I always get those moments, you know you can tell when someone's in love with their work and what they're doing, when they're pumped up. And that's love in the workplace, bringing that passion and I would go so far as to say also with how we interact with one another. We can come into a space out of respect and care and love so that we are honoring one another in a way that brings love in a workplace in a very respectful and dignified manner. Yeah and can you see those at your work that do love what they do and are super passionate about their work and how they're able to to do things a little bit differently than maybe someone that's proverbially there just kind of clocking in and clocking out and it's a means to an end? Oh yeah, yeah. To me you know when I really see it, when it radiates, I mean it doesn't even take long to tell somebody is around you that you know is on fire, that is passionate about what they do because most of us can feel it. It's sometimes hard to describe and put in words but we know when it's there. And one way that I think we can measure it in a way that is really familiar in HR circles is engagement. For me engagement is about when we're sharing our discretionary effort. Sometimes I hear it talked about about you know satisfaction. It's great to know we're satisfied. I could be satisfied at work because I sit and you know I watch cat videos on YouTube all day. I could be highly satisfied because I'm getting paid for it right. That's not that's not engagement. There are people out there who can do all kinds of things and be satisfied. What we need are people who are sharing their discretionary energy. They're going over and beyond and then we have so many places and like then we have so much discretionary energy to share. We decide where we share it and when people have passion with sincerity, when they love why they're there and what they're doing wherever it is in life, that's when you get that discretionary effort because they want to be there. They want to do it whatever it is and how great when we get to get that at work right. Perfect. Yeah no doubt no doubt and it kind of goes to one of the things that I've been really trying to channel my energy to articulate appropriately within the book is just how does your organization make the people feel that work there and and then in turn how do they do that back right. So this to me love is a feeling right. It's something that I'm passionate about. It's in this desire around engagement. People tend to be more engaged and more interested in things that they love or have an interest in and those that aren't necessarily. It's like so to me like engagement can be you know you know replaced with feeling or love right. How much do you love what you do whereas in HR maybe we're afraid to use that word love like is that like is it something at your work or in your HR department or things that you've had experiences with where you say the word love and they to your point they screech or like oh gosh you can't say that because that means somebody's going to be doing something wrong. Absolutely you know I've been in an organization as a consultant worked in many different kinds of organizations and I've been in organizations where even the word compassion you know isn't used let alone love right and we come into the workplace as a whole person and boy today more than ever as more and more people are working in a room in the office it's everything about our life is there. Love is a major human emotion. How do we cut that off? Why would we want to? As long as we can display and share it in a way that is authentic and appropriate for whatever that relationship is and the task at hand. It belongs with us you know if we're if we're not if we're not sharing it we're just pretending it's not there because it's just it's a basic human part of us and hopefully something that helps us wake up every morning because hopefully we love what we're about to do when we start the day. Yeah no no doubt. Do you think kind of the contrary of that the the the reason why individuals within HR do not love what they do how would you how would you finish that sentence? You're saying the reason HR professionals may not love what they do? Yes. You know my hope is that people do and I guess when they call you if anyone is listening to this and they say I don't love what I do you know what I want to ask is you know what about you is keeping you in HR? We spend most of our waking hours at our jobs most of us if we're working you know we'll be some people who are part-time and maybe that's not the case a lot of us spend 40 you know 50 60 maybe 70 hours a week at our jobs and so when you're spending your waking hours doing what you do for work why would we not love it and so why do people not do it better in HR my question would be are you in HR find what find what makes your you know your heart beat faster that fills your cup that makes you whole because we all have things that we love and are passionate about and it's okay if it's not HR you know so if you're not loving it talk about it what do you love? Yeah no I I couldn't agree more and it's it's one of those it's it's interesting and one of the things that spurned this book idea was I did a presentation called HR like a boss ironically to about a hundred people at a local SHRM conference and I was afraid of the question I was going to ask even before I went in there I was trying to be not controversial but just try to spurn some dialogue and I asked the question why do people hate HR? Why do why do employees hate the function of human resources? So I was afraid like when I asked that question they were going to like you know throw you know pieces of paper at me and start booing but literally Michelle almost everyone in that room raised their hand and had an incredibly passionate passion story about why they didn't why they felt people didn't like the folks that they were working with in human resources and I was like I've never asked a question in a presentation before where I had to like cut people off I was like hey we have to keep going or I'm not going to get through the rest of my my my presentation so it really made me kind of resonate with like why do people feel so much of that about HR and is that HR exuding that back to those employees in the way that they they they do their work because that's part of my concern like if you're not really into this stuff there's a lot that you have to do really well to be an awesomely amazing HR professional and if you're if you're not all in then my guess is those employees that you're serving are going to feel that. Absolutely yeah I think so too and you know that idea around why would someone not you know like their HR or hate their HR you know when there's not a value add that's clear there's not a lot of love there right because why would we invest in something that feels like a non-value add you know or something that we have to do and sometimes people might be in roles where they feel that it's a non-value add themselves and so it all comes down to where are we bringing the value how does it align to the business line are we speaking in terms of the business and what does that mean not HR speak business speak you know and I do believe HR is part of the business but sometimes we can get caught in our own acronyms and what we're doing and we are there to serve the greater calling of the business whatever it is if it's serving in the community whatever the mission is whatever the vision is that's what we need to be tied to we need to be closely tethered to it and trying to connect those dots between what the company's purpose is and what the people that work there so there's alignment between those things so if they're involved in some community mission that people that work there are also interested in that community mission as opposed to something they don't care about or like you said doesn't bring value to them then you're going to get why am I doing this it's going to distrust this hate this this hate for I don't want to work here yeah yeah or doing it just because we have to if it's you know it's it's a it's a basic requirement of the business in order to do what the rest of the business does as opposed to seeing the correlating factors for why it helps the business to be successful right so there are things that we absolutely have to do as part of the business we have to do payroll we need to we need to be compliant we need to do audit so how do we tell the story around how that correlates to it might not be a causation to other parts of the business success but how does it correlate to it so that we are successful we have to constantly be drawing that line what's the risk of not doing what we're doing and why that becomes so important that you can't live without it because it is helping us to be successful we need to understand that and be clear on it we need to be able to tell the story in a way that is understandable to our sponsors measurements that make sense language that makes sense not packing in our speed but in their speed and I think that's when it all starts to come together and we can amp up and dial up our love factor for what we're doing because we feel the value right when people are saying yeah we need that so last but not least I'll get you out of here on this because I have this idea of what an hr like a boss looks like and what what they do and how we define it but I'd love to get your perspective how would you how would you define someone that does hr like a boss they come to the table as an owner of the business whatever that means to them so like a boss means you own the business and again beyond that h whatever that traditional hr mindset is what is the business about and everything you talk about when you're doing your job how does it align to the business be an owner be an owner be a leader michelle you're awesome I love this podcast especially because we got to dive into a subject hr which is near and dear to both of our hearts and we're incredibly passionate about it and giving back to the community the best that we can and to our employers and the organizations that we work with and for those of you listening I hope you were able to gleam a few of michelle's key points which first and foremost is it's okay to use that word love and if you want to translate it into into passion that's fine in your ability to be able to to resonate that and your ability to deliver hr to your constituents and the people that you work with and at the same time let's own what we do let's own own ourselves let's take ownership of of our daily life and our attitude and the way by which we approach our work and as a result that will have a cascading effect down on the people that we represent and the employers and organizations that we work for so this is john bernatovich I hope that everyone enjoyed today's video series and in my chat with michelle leading and I hope that if you continue to enjoy what we're sharing please subscribe to this channel as well as share this video concept with others friends family etc so this is john bernatovich signing off thank you all for listening in and we'll talk to you next time